Author Archives: Joe

A COVID-19 Vaccine Mystery Explained

Posted on by
7

Quote of the Day

The most constructive lesson now lies in prevention by design. Adenoviral vectors still have scientific value in vaccines and gene delivery research. The goal is therefore sharper than simple abandonment. Researchers now have a defined protein target to modify or remove. If pVII or its critical epitope starts the harmful immune sequence, future developers can test safer vectors that preserve immunogenicity while avoiding this trigger. That possibility changes the tone of the discussion around COVID vaccine side effects. Scientists no longer need to speak only in broad associations or unresolved suspicion. They can work from a mapped antigen, a defined mutation, and a clearer susceptibility model. WHO said in 2021 that open, transparent, and evidence-based communication is essential to maintain trust. That principle still applies.

Surveillance systems detected rare blood clots from COVID vaccine campaigns. The scientific response then kept going until the biology became clearer. The new NEJM study does not answer every remaining question. It does, however, give medicine a credible molecular explanation and a practical route toward safer adenoviral vaccine design. That is the most useful takeaway from this long debate. The problem was rare, the mechanism was obscure, and the investigation kept moving until the evidence sharpened. For readers trying to understand blood clots from COVID vaccine programs without falling into panic or denial, that is the central point. Medicine now has a much better explanation for what happened, why it happened rarely, and how future vaccine engineering may reduce the risk even further. That progress also gave researchers a clearer path toward safer vectors, better screening, and more confident public communication about risk.

Bruce Abrahamse
March 25, 2026
This is why some people had blood clots from the COVID-19 vaccine and others didn’t

Please note that this is not one of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines that so many people had concerns about.

Also note that the frequency of the blood clots was about 4 people per one million doses with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. With the AstraZeneca vaccine it was about 2 cases per 100,000 in those aged 60 or older and 2 to 3 cases per 100,000 under 60.

These rates are so low that it is difficult to detect in testing. But when many hundreds of millions of people received the vaccine, the correlation became noticeable.

Your Membership Isn’t Just a Card

Posted on by
8

Quote of the Day

In September 2025, Judge Reed O’Connor declared the federal post office carry ban unconstitutional. The government failed to persuade the court that a historical tradition of such bans existed, because there wasn’t one in over 200 years. The ban didn’t even exist until 1972.

The DOJ responded by asking the court to narrow the injunction to limit protection to specific named individuals and anyone who was a SAF member at the time the lawsuit was first filed, leaving everyone who joined after that date unprotected. Their position: yes, the law is unconstitutional, but we still want to enforce it against as many people as possible.

The court rejected that argument. The injunction stands for all SAF members, present and future.

…

Your membership isn’t just a card. It’s a federal court order standing between you and an unconstitutional law.

Dana Wilson
Director of Development / Major Gifts Officer
Second Amendment Foundation
Via email March 24, 2026

I believe SAF does really good work. I became a life member many years ago and have been donating over $1,000/year for at least a decade. If you are not already a member and want to join you can do that here. It is more than just a legal pass to carry in the U.S. Post Office, it is funding the slap down of anti-gunners all over the country.

Another Data Point Against Socialists

Posted on by
43

Quote of the Day

We have a great place for agriculture. We have the right climate and soils, but our cost of doing business is so much higher. The problem is Olympia. They just don’t understand agriculture — how we have to compete against other states and other countries.

Vander Kooy
March 17, 2026
What’s the matter with Washington? | Capital Press

I can not tell you how many people in the last couple of months have told me they have to leave Washington State. Today someone told me he and his wife were looking for a new place to live. The currently living in Lewiston Idaho. His wife found a nice home in Clarkston, Washington just across the river from Idaho where he has his own business. He pointed out to his wife what the business tax rate in Washington and that was enough to kill the Clarkston house without going into all the gun issues.

Washington State Democrats are full blown socialists, and some even wear that badge with pride. Socialism always kills businesses, they take your guns, and sometimes then murder their citizens, too. Don’t give socialists your support or your tax dollars. Move out of socialist states.

The FBI can Track You

Posted on by
17

Quote of the Day

The FBI is buying up information that can be used to track people’s movement and location history, Director Kash Patel said during a Senate hearing Wednesday.

…

The U.S. Supreme Court has required law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant for getting people’s location data from cell phone providers since 2018, but data brokers offer an alternative avenue by purchasing the information directly.

Alfred Ng
March 18, 2026
FBI is buying data that can be used to track people, Patel says – POLITICO

And with your location information they know things about you even your closest friends do not know. Even if you are couch surfing trying to avoid giving up your location, they know where you live. They know if you were in the vicinity of that January 6th riot. They know if you were scouting the house where four University of Idaho students were murdered. They know you visit the gay bath house a couple times a month when you tell your wife you are working late. They know you are part of the “Underground Railroad” for slaves/wetbacks/Jews/dads-with-child-custody problems.

We live in interesting times.

6G Mobile Communication Systems

Posted on by
17

5G phones have settled into common use and now 6G is on the drawing boards. So, what will be in the 6G feature set?

Read about it here: The 6G vision: Fewer dead zones, smarter networks, and built-in ‘radar’.

This looks to a scary feature:

One of the planned new features in 6G is called Integrated Sensing and Communication, or ISAC.

“It’s the big talking point that’s getting the most attention right now. ISAC means that we will no longer see the mobile network as just a way to transport data. Instead, radio waves will be transformed into a sensor, a kind of radar. The network can ‘see’ and measure distance, speed, and movement with centimeter precision without the devices needing GPS or cameras. This opens doors for everything from traffic monitoring to fall detection in healthcare,” says Mikael Gidlund, professor at Mid Sweden University.

The idea that all mobile phone masts could be able to sense their physical surroundings and detect presence or movement may sound like science fiction — and also like a nightmare from a privacy perspective. This is something Mikael Gidlund is well aware of.

“This is one of the most important technical challenges that must be solved for the technology to gain acceptance. The goal is to design the system according to the principle of ‘privacy by design.’ ISAC works like a radar, not a camera. It works with anonymous point clouds rather than biometric data. We can see that someone has fallen and needs help, but not who it is. By allowing data processing to take place locally in the mast and building technical barriers to identification directly into the standard, we can actually increase privacy by replacing cameras in sensitive environments. Anonymization is not an option — it is a technical prerequisite for trust.

They are saying some of the right words and phrases. But if they have centimeter resolution, it probably means this tech will enable the detection of people who carry guns. If they can tell if someone has fallen, they can tell if two or a group of people are having sex.

I find it telling they enumerate some potential benefits, but then lump all the downside into “privacy.” And just because they don’t know who someone is, if they can detect a person who as fallen, then I’m almost certain they can track an individual person. And if they can be tracked, privacy just disappeared.

As a first step, what needs to be done is to enumerate all the ways this technology could be abused and apply “privacy by design” to those use cases. My intuition tells me there will not be much left in the benefits category once they have eliminated the potential for abuse.

Alternate Motive for Gun Grabbing?

Posted on by
4

Quote of the Day

According to Daniel Fritter of the Canadian firearm magazine Calibre, as of early 2026 the amount spent on the gun grab program is CAD$779.8 million, an amount that exceeds the original estimated cost by more than 300 percent.

Fritter refers to government sources showing that “the current known, documented cost to the taxpayer” per gun surrendered or confiscated is approximately CAD$25,000, with the “undocumented cost being even higher” because the “costs accrued by more than a dozen partner agencies” involved haven’t been included.

To place that per-gun price tag into context, Public Safety Canada has advised that it intends to pay out an average of CAD$1,800 per gun, making the gun grab’s administrative cost per firearm significantly over CAD$20,000…and likely more.

However, the few people who participated in the federal government’s initial rollout of the program for individual gun owners in November were reportedly paid far less, around CAD$700 per gun, increasing the already astonishing imbalance between the cost of administration and compensation. Nothing has been publicly released about the make, model and compensation paid for each confiscated gun collected then and whether these were truly the “weapons of war” that the Liberals used to justify the gun grab. The government “released records that were almost entirely blacked out” in response to a freedom of information request.

Canada’s gun owners have overwhelmingly rejected the gun grab: “somewhere between just 1.6 and 6 percent of newly prohibited firearms in circulation have been declared,” states Fritter. An increasing number of jurisdictions have taken the “ten-foot barge pole” approach to participation, too.

NRA ILA
March 16, 2026
Canada’s Spending More Than $20,000 in Administrative Costs Per Confiscated Gun in Its Bloated ‘Compensation’ Scheme – Shooting News Weekly

With such an incredibly high “administrative cost” per gun confiscated you have to wonder if the primary purpose is to fill the pockets of the criminal politicians.

In any case, with less than 6% of the guns being turned over you have to give Canadian gun owners some credit for the risks they are taking. I wish them luck.

AI that Grew Up on a Farm

Posted on by
1

I found this in my blob comment spam folder:

That quote really hit home for me—there’s something profound about how disconnected so many people are from where their food comes from. Growing up on a farm, I learned early on that every meal starts with work, whether it’s planting, tending, or harvesting. It’s a different mindset than the office world you described, where the focus is more on systems and security than on the actual source of what sustains us. Appreciate you bringing that contrast into focus.

The clues that indicate this was spam are not convincing in the body of the comment. The only things I see that is a hint is the “—” and that the comment is bland with a gentle positive tone. But it is not the type of thing I would see a year or two ago.* The comment is targeted for the specific blog post. Had the real clues not been present and it made it past the spam filter I would have let it slide.

The real clues as to this being AI are here:

qwenart
0 approved
qwenimg.artx
support@qwenimg.art
152.53.88.152

I suspect the spam filter recognizes these components individually, and/or as a set.

Just so you know, even if an AI comment gets caught by the spam filter and it is as good as or better than some of my real readers, I usually release it for everyone to read.

* I still get some of the old obvious stuff such this:

wow i really like this article, very well detailed and a lot of time is invested in this. keep up the good work and i will be checking back for new update. thanx https://moldremediationwilmingtonnc.com/

Mold Remediation Wilmington NC
0 approved
Mold%20Remediation%20Wilmington%20NCx
wilhelm_dolorem@gmail.com
212.30.36.77

The Necessity of an Accurate Problem Statement

Posted on by
6

Quote of the Day

If lifespan increases simply because one major disease is delayed, then longer survival does not automatically mean that aging itself has slowed. For example, an intervention that extends the lifespan of mice by delaying cancer is fundamentally different from one that slows the gradual decline of many body systems, even if both produce similar survival curves.

Genomic Press
March 13, 2026
Scientists Say Conquering Age-Related Diseases Could Dramatically Extend Human Life

When stated this way it is obviously true. One might be tempted to make light of this. But correctly expressing something obvious can be very difficult when no one has ever had the viewpoint from which the truth is obvious.

The article this QOTD came from is an example of something I have talked about before: The necessity of an accurate problem statement. You can call it a simple thing. But it may be a profound change in mindset which enables rapid progress toward a far better solution.

I would like to thank my engineering professors from several decades ago for this enlightenment. One of the first things taught in Engineering 101 was how to write an engineering report. And the first thing in a such a report was the problem statement. That problem statement was to be written before you took your slide rule out of its case or looked up the gain bandwidth product of the cool new operational amplifier you heard about a few days ago and were itching to find a use for.

This can be illustrated more simply with the adage, “Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.” Technically, this tendency is a form of cognitive bias called Law of the instrument. Writing an accurate problem statement is one means to overcome this bias.

This simple thing can make a huge difference in every problem you need to solve. It is not limited to aging, gun owner rights, politics, interpersonal relationships, or engineering. First, think about what you are trying to solve, not how to make a solution work.

Mistakes we Both Make

Posted on by
8

Quote of the Day

The mistake pro-2A people make is that we assume that if only we could explain how none of their proposed “solutions” would prevent crime they would stop trying to ban guns.

They fucking HATE you. They want you disarmed so that you can’t tell them “No.”

They must be defeated

Sean D Sorrentino @SorrentinoSean
Posted on X, March 16, 2026

This was in response to:

I have nothing to add.

Socialism is Bad

Posted on by
8

Quote of the Day

If one person has a right to something he did not earn, of necessity it requires that another person not have a right to something that he did earn.

Walter E. Williams
May 1, 2015
American Contempt for Liberty

And you know what that leads to, right? Among other things a much lower productivity and standard of living for everyone without an “in” with the political leadership.

I was recently in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (see below) and will share pictures in a later blog post.

No Connection to Food

Posted on by
6

Quote of the Day

Then you go to the grocery store, and it’s like 90% of the people are just in a pack. They don’t know. They have no connection to food at all. And so it’s very nice. You know, we were raised with it to know that thing that you took is gonna be your dinner meal.

Wyatt Russell
March 12, 2026
Kurt Russell offers ‘no apologies’ for traditional hunting lifestyle

As I have said before, seeing how food is grown and harvested on the farm is an alternate reality. The same applies to the harvesting of domestic animals and wild game. I work in an office overlooking part of a city. There are nearly 200 people in a large office each with huge computer screens each doing their part to prevent, track, and stop bad guys attempting to gain access to our nation’s critical infrastructure. I then visit the farm in Idaho and find the differences incredibly profound.

See also: Riley Green finds reality at home farming and hunting in Alabama over fame | Fox News.

More Research Required

Posted on by
6

Weird:

Acetaminophen, also known as paracetamol and sold widely under the brand names Tylenol and Panadol, may also increase risk-taking, according to research from 2020 that measured changes in people’s behavior when under the influence of the medication.

This seems a suspicious. The drug has been in use for decades and this side effect is just now being discovered? Maybe. But it going to need more study to seriously convince people.

To add to the suspicion, the study was done in 2020 and this article is just a rehash of that six year old study.

A Lighter Topic for These Dark Times

Posted on by
7

Quote of the Day

For heterosexuals, rates of infidelity are four times higher than the rate of open relationships. By contrast, for sexual minorities (with the exception of lesbians), rates of open relationships are higher than the rate of infidelity.

Justin Lehmiller @JustinLehmiller
Posted on X, March 7, 2026

See also Rates of Consensual and Nonconsensual Nonmonogamy Among Heterosexual, Gay, and Bisexual Adults – Sex and Psychology. This article gives us the numbers:

  • Overall prevalence of infidelity: about 8% of heterosexual participants, 14% of gay participants, 6% of lesbian participants, 18% of bisexual participants, and 6% of those who described “other” sexualities reported nonconsensual nonmonogamy (defined here as agreeing to be sexually exclusive with a partner, but one or both partners cheated or had an affair).
  • Overall prevalence of open relationships: 2% of heterosexual participants, 32% of gay participants, 5% of lesbian participants, 22% of bisexual participants, and 14% of those who reported “other” sexualities.

The way I initially read the post on X was that open relationships result in lower the rates of infidelity. But reading the article I find that even with a higher prevalence open relationship as sort of a “safety valve” the infidelity rates are actually higher.

I’m not sure what to conclude about this other than, “That’s interesting.”

Is Your Opinion Irrelevant?

Posted on by
15

Quote of the Day

If you don’t own a rifle, your opinion is mostly irrelevant.

Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_
Posted on X, August 14, 2024

There is a surprising amount of truth in this. This is particularly true in the political arena.

A Solidly, Aggressively Patient Threat

Posted on by
11

Quote of the Day

I want the American people to understand that if it was not an imminent threat, it was a solidly, aggressively patient threat waiting to pounce at any moment to do great damage to American interests.

Nazee Moinian
March 11, 2026
Iranian-born scholar warns regime was an ‘aggressively patient threat waiting to pounce’ on America

The contribution of Iran to the U.S. war in Iraq in the 2000s was far beyond “patient” and “waiting.” I personally know servicemen killed and severely maimed by Iranian supplied weapons.

I don’t talk about work much for various reasons, but I will say that cyber-attacks from Iran on U.S. critical infrastructure are, for all intents and purposes, continuous. I cannot imagine the attacks are any less frequent on U.S. allies. The attacks have mixed success, but it only takes the right one to cause great harm.

Hence, Moinian is only wrong to the extent which she implies Iran had not yet done or attempted significant damage to U.S. interests.

Think About this Another Way

Posted on by
16

The U.S. and Israel have decapitated Iran and probably are working on the neck and shoulders of the religious leadership. The apparent thinking is that Iran will soon run out of people volunteering to be leaders or change their evil ways.

That makes sense. At least at first thought it does. Let’s run through a little thought experiment I have had a few times with some close friends a decade or two ago.

Imagine an alternate timeline where SCOTUS came up with different result in the Heller decision and things went downhill from there. Today, in this alternate timeline, U.S. gun owners realize all they have left is the 100 million guns and a few billion rounds of ammo they had hidden before everything else was confiscated. They still have the firepower and now the motivation to remove the tyrants and restore liberty and the true meaning of the U.S. constitution.

In a coordinated attack, with the help of insiders during the state of the Union address, they take out POTUS, all his cabinet, the VP, and the Speaker of the House. They then make it known that everyone who voted for the unconstitutional (in the eyes of the gun owners) laws must be removed from office and replaced with constitutionally friendly politicians. If not, minds will continue to see the light in the most literal sense.

What would the response be? Would the remaining anti-gun politicians go into hiding or give up power? Or would they double (and/or triple) down?

I believe that the smart money, in the best-case scenario, says, “That’s an interesting question.” The more likely result is a police state and mass killings of innocent people.

What are your thoughts on what to expect in this alternate U.S. timeline and what that might tell us about what the Iran response will be?

Real Change is Coming

Posted on by
7

I have changed the order from the original post to make things clearer:

Israel destroys bridge in Lebanon, threatens Gaza-scale destruction

On Wednesday night, Hezbollah launched 200 rockets at northern Israeli communities.

…

 Israel destroyed a bridge in southern Lebanon on Friday and dropped leaflets in Beirut threatening Gaza-scale devastation as it deployed more troops to fight Iran-backed Hezbollah and warned of more attacks on the country’s infrastructure.

…

Israeli aircraft dropped flyers over Beirut threatening to inflict damage on Lebanon similar to the devastation the military wrought on Gaza during its two-year war with Hamas. Much of Gaza has been reduced to rubble and nearly all its population displaced.

“In light of the great success in Gaza, the newspaper of the new reality arrives to Lebanon,” the flyer said.

Another flyer called on Lebanese to strip Hezbollah of its weapons. It featured two QR codes to links on WhatsApp and Facebook, accompanied by a message telling Lebanese to make contact if they want to see “real change” in their country.

I am reminded of the leaflets the U.S. military dropped over Japanese cities (Warning Leaflets – Nuclear Museum). Japan did not heed them even after Hiroshima was vaporized. A similar lack of response will occur in Lebanon. Verbal persuasion is difficult in most people and in essentially impossible in religious extremists.

There is a reason why we have expressions like, “Using a clue bat”, and “hit them with a clue by four.” It takes a different type of “persuasion” to change the minds of these people.

The distribution of the leaflets is the right thing to do. But only to somewhat reduce the guilt of those delivering the bombs the harshness of the international criticism. The rockets will continue to be launched into Israel and, sadly, real change will come from the sky.

When Vigorous Assertions are Their Native Language

Posted on by
10

Quote of the Day

Peace is possible: through superior firepower and willingness to use it in the most devastating and efficient (and sparing) way achievable.

We should try that.

Sarah H. Hoyt
March 6, 2026
All We Are Saying Is Give Peas A Chance – According To Hoyt

I never understood people who insist that in order to have peace we needed to disarm. Or the variation where they thought the Mutually Assured Destruction policy was insane. Whenever I tried to engage with people like this, they would either “prove their point” via vigorous assertion (raising their voice and repeating themselves) or go silent. I took the silent treatment as they had not really thought it through and were attempting to engage their brain when I asked them to explain how this worked. I was fine with this. But the vigorous assertion type annoys me. They are all emotion without no data or logic. Those types are a disgrace to humanity and a significant number of animal species.

As much as I dislike violence, I realize that sometimes it is the only way. Particularly with those “vigorous assertion” types. There are non-emotional types you need to worry about too. People can have faulty data or drastically different fundamental principles and arrive at conclusions which involve the elimination of “the rich”, “the poor”, “intellectuals”, “capitalists”, etc. But it seems at some point they, or at least their useful idiots, morph into a version of the “vigorous assertion” class.

If they get themselves worked up into a high enough emotional state, they become physically violent. And with enough numbers they become genocidal.

You can only communicate with these in their native language such that they truly understand. And there are very few more vigorous assertions they understand better than bullets and bombs.

Run Away! Run Away!

Posted on by
8

Quote of the Day

I was invited to do a panel at La Verne University on Bruen.

State Senator Portantino, who pushed a ton of CA gun control bills, was also set to appear. I told them I was happy to do it, but didn’t want my presence to cause their higher profile invitees to drop out and ruin their event. They were confident they wouldn’t, so I agreed.

Portantino dropped out last minute, appearing only for a few minutes on Zoom and taking no questions. Another gun control professor also dropped out. So it was just me, a pro gun prof, and a middle of the road guy.

I torched Portantino as a coward and rebutted every point he asserted.

Antigunners are, generally, cowards.

Kostas Moros @MorosKostas
Posted on X, March 6, 2026

I’m not certain I call it cowardice if you know you will get slaughtered and cause damage to your cause in the process.

There is a lot of evidence to support the claim this behavior is common. They know they cannot win on legal, principle, or practical grounds. They can only win on lies, deception, and emotional manipulation. They are evil.

Excellent Points

Posted on by

Prison demographics show that Democrats account for twice as many people as all others combined. Perhaps many Democrats already know about prison approximately their utopia and have acted on this knowledge.